Rumours from China suggest that Microsoft may be planning a slimmed down Xbox One for this October, but is it true?

Microsoft is allegedly planning to launch a suite of new hardware upgrades this year, with rumours of new phones, tablets, and wearable tech, and also… an Xbox One Mini.

The rumours began at Chinese blog WPDang, which now seems to be mysteriously down. But website The Verge has already confirmed their predictions about the Lumia 940 and 940XL phone, the new Surface Pro 4, and the Band 2 fitness device.

Perhaps they were all easy guesses but the only hardware not yet confirmed is the idea of an Xbox One Mini, which up till now hasn’t be rumoured at all.

Although slimmed-down hardware is now a regular part of most console’s lifespan they usually only arrive in the third or fourth year, and the Xbox One won’t even be two years old until November.

Advertisement

Advertisement

But given how the PlayStation 4 has sold almost twice as much as the Xbox One worldwide, it’s not impossible to imagine Microsoft might want to fast-track a new version. Except, surely Gamescom earlier in the month would’ve been the perfect place to unveil it?

The lack of corroboration from other sources makes us very dubious, but for the record the rumour claims that the Mini may drop Blu-ray support for movie, is one-third the size, and significantly quieter.

Personally we don’t believe the rumour, even though we’d be willing to bet a slim model appears in time for next Christmas. But at the very least you’ve only got two months to wait to see if the stories are true…